


Home is a State of Mind

by eliddell



Series: Blood of Heaven and Earth 'verse [4]
Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Chocobos, Family, Gen, Lots of Original Characters - Freeform, Slice of Life, sorry about that
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-09
Updated: 2019-09-14
Packaged: 2020-10-13 13:33:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 13,675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20583323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eliddell/pseuds/eliddell
Summary: Vincent has no idea what to do with his sister's family when he stops by their home.  They have no idea what to do with him, either.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Or, what Vincent was doing while Seph was having a holiday dinner at the Gainsboroughs'.
> 
> **Disclaimer**: Final Fantasy VII belongs to Square-Enix or whatever they're calling themselves these days, not to me. The specific text of this fanfic falls under the CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license to the extent that this does not infringe on Square's rights.

On the eastern side of the Western Continent, south of Mount Corel but north of the desert, there's a large area that isn't good for much except agriculture. It's very good for that, however: warm enough to farm even in winter, wet enough that greens will grow without irrigation, and the railway makes it easy to transport goods to Costa del Sol in bulk. Just a little higher up, in the foothills of the mountains that form the Western Range of the Central Divide, is some of the best chocobo-raising country on the planet, second only to the open fields near Kalm—or so the people from Kalm claim. The locals have a different opinion. 

I hadn't been back there in a very long time, just skirted the region while on my way from Nibelheim to the Eastern Continent. I couldn't believe I was going back now . . . and especially not like this. 

"Wow, Vinnie, I can't believe you were born all the way out here! It's like the ass-end of nowhere, yo!" Reno sent the helicopter buzzing low over someone's fields as he spoke. He was, technically, wrong: I'd been born in Bone, back in the days when my mother had still been accompanying my father on his expeditions. That had been one of the reasons they'd grown apart . . . or so I believed when I looked back across the divide of years and considered things said and not said. 

Correcting Reno wasn't worth the trouble, though. He'd just find something else to jabber about. Not that Reno was like Zack Fair. Quite the opposite: he was all Turk, using his verbal digs to probe for weakness, even in fellow Turks. 

Beside me, Rayleigh slept on, oblivious. My niece had asked me to cast a Sleepel on her before we'd even gotten our luggage loaded into the vehicle, and she had looked so exhausted that I hadn't asked any questions. We kept finding more hidden projects of Hojo's, she kept being asked to review them so that we knew what we were dealing with, and everything that man had done contained the seeds of nightmares. 

Hopefully a few days of vacation back on the farm where she had grown up would help her relax a little. Although I wasn't sure what the same few days would do to me. "Vacation" was a foreign concept to me. Turks don't take vacations. Nor do laboratory specimens, or SOLDIERs trying to deal with an upsurge in the number of monsters wandering into inhabited areas. The closest thing to a "vacation" that I could remember having since I was a schoolboy involved being laid up in a hospital bed . . . or a coffin. 

And "home" was another difficult concept. Until recently, I hadn't had one of those in a long time, either. Not since I was twelve. But slowly, the word was beginning to take on meaning again. _Home_ was now a sparsely furnished apartment in the Shinra building that was gaining a few personal touches as the weeks went by—Masamune's stand and Sephiroth's book collection of heavy nonfiction mixed with police procedurals and the king-sized bed we shared on the nights when we were both in Midgar. 

Returning now to the place where I had lived as a child felt like it was going to complicate matters. Not quite a betrayal, but something . . . akin. 

«Then why are you going there at all?» Chaos asked lazily. 

"Because I want to see my grandmother again, and this may be my only chance," I muttered, letting my words be lost in the noise from the helicopter. 

«Why?» 

"She's extremely old for a human and could die at any time." 

«I wasn't wondering about the only-chance part, host-mine, but about why you want to see her in the first place.» 

"I don't think I can make you understand. It's a human thing." 

That produced a disgusted «hmph» from Chaos, a sleepy growl from Death Gigas, and, surprisingly, a vague sensation of assent and understanding from the Galian Beast—well, behemoths did live in small groups and presumably had family bonds, so perhaps this near-extinct variant was the same. 

"Yo, Vince! Wake up! Is this it?" Reno brought the helicopter in closer to a cluster of buildings. They'd added on to the stables over the decades I had been away, and the house had a new wing, but it was still recognizable. 

"Land up on the hill beyond the buildings, and don't fly too low over the stables," I said. 

"Afraid of spooking the birdies?" 

"If one of the hens goes into shock and lays before the egg's fully formed, I'll make certain it's you the insurance company comes after," I replied. 

"_Insurance company?_ That's cruel and unusual, yo. At least I do my torturing myself." But Reno carefully kept the chopper well up until he was able to drop it straight down on the hill. 

I shook Rayleigh by the shoulder as Reno began the shutdown procedures for our vehicle. She blinked awake and smiled at me. 

"It won't be that bad," she said, too quietly for an unenhanced person to hear. 

I shrugged. 

Several people were already gathered around the helicopter by the time I opened the door. I didn't know whether they were family members or hired hands—I recognized none of them. 

I gritted my teeth and stepped down into the long grass, then steadied Rayleigh as she exited the helicopter. Several people were staring. I let them, since there wasn't much I could do about it without resorting to violence. 

Reno handed our luggage down—Rayleigh's luggage, for the most part. I had one standard SOLDIER duffel bag, the same one I'd been bringing with me on missions. Although this time, it held more clothes and less in the way of weapons and camping equipment. I'd buried my sabatons and two hundred extra rounds of ammunition for Cerberus at the very bottom, wrapped in a uniform shirt. Hopefully, I wouldn't need either of them. 

"About time you got back, Sis," one of the men said to Rayleigh—barely a man, truth be told. He might have been Zack Fair's age. Brown hair, brown eyes. He resembled my sister a bit, but he didn't have her colouring. "And you must be my Uncle Vincent," he added, turning to me. "I'm Estoran Pruitt." 

He held out his hand, and I took it, trying not to give any sign of how careful I was being as I shook it. I wasn't especially strong compared to the other First Class SOLDIERs, but that was one of those comparisons that was a bit of a joke to begin with. I could still break bone if I squeezed too hard. 

"Dad's out back, working with a temperamental hen someone gave us to gentle down," he added to Rayleigh. "He has about as much use for 'rubbernecking' as he ever did. Aunt Jennie and Uncle Max and the cousins got here yesterday, but they went to visit the Hegel place and won't be back for a couple more hours. And Mom's inside. Cooking enough food for everyone who's come this year is a job and a half." 

"How would you know? You haven't helped since you were seven." Rayleigh said it with a smile, though. "What about Allie?" 

"Also inside, under protest. Storing up questions to ask about General Sephiroth while she scrubs the potatoes, no doubt." 

"Allie's some kind of local officer in the Silver Elite," Rayleigh added to me, and I repressed a groan. "She'll probably be more thorough with her questions than the panel that judged my doctoral dissertation." 

"You guys done with the meet'n'greet?" Reno called down from the helicopter. "'Cause I'd like to get back to Midgar sometime this century!" 

"We need to clear some space," I said. "Five days," I added to Reno, who rolled his eyes. 

"Like I'm gonna forget, yo! Not sure who would get to me first if I just left you here—think I'd prefer it be the Gen'ral. At least being cut in half's quick. The boss-man would probably gut me with a rusty spoon. And then get creative." 

"Just go." 

"Once you get everyone at least ten feet away." 

"I've seen you take off with people clinging to the sides of the chopper," Rayleigh said. 

"That was an emergency. This ain't, unless you make me turn it into one." 

"Everyone back away from the helicopter," Estoran said, with a smile, and the circle widened enough that Reno slammed the door shut and went to spin the rotors up. "Here, Sis, let me help with your luggage," the young man added, reaching for the handle of Rayleigh's larger suitcase. "You okay?" he added, to me, and I shrugged. 

An older man—one of the few who hadn't turned back toward the stables and corrals as the group began to break up—laughed and said, "Still a man of few words, aren't you, Vincent?" 

"You two know each other, Mike?" Rayleigh asked. I was wondering the same thing. The man's face wasn't familiar to me, but he would have been a child when I left . . . 

"Not really. I was three grades behind him at school. We never spoke to each other, and he wouldn't have noticed me, but everyone knew who he was." 

The local school, back then, had had three rooms, each housing three or four grades depending on who was what age which year. This man and I had probably overlapped in the same room a time or two, but I had to admit that I still didn't remember him. 

"Kind of funny that I look older than you do now," Mike added. "Is Shinra hiding the Fountain of Youth in the basement of that tower of theirs or something?" 

I shook my head. "I spent a long time in suspended animation after an experimental medical treatment, so I didn't really _live_ a lot of the intervening years." It was an explanation that I expected to have to give over and over again. At least it was true, if . . . undetailed. 

"Must have been some medical treatment," Mike said, eyebrows raised. I offered him another one of my all-purpose shrugs. 

"Let's at least take the luggage inside before Estoran collapses or something," Rayleigh suggested before the silence became too uncomfortable. 

The house . . . had changed, on the inside. Fortunately. If it had been exactly the same as I remembered it having been when I'd left forty years ago, I would have been questioning either my sanity or that of the current inhabitants. The wallpaper in the entryway was gone, replaced by plain white paint, and someone had obviously done some wiring, because there were electrical outlets that I didn't remember, and a new light fixture. The bench Estoran sat down on briefly to remove his boots may have been the same—it was difficult to tell. Rayleigh and I just wiped our feet on the rough straw mat at the entrance to the house proper, since we hadn't been mucking around with the chocobos. 

I caught the smell of stew cooking when I was past the inner door, and wondered suddenly how long it had been since I'd had a home-cooked meal. Long enough ago that it had been made by Veld's late wife, I suspected. Sephiroth and I mostly had our food made and delivered by someone else, and on the days when that wasn't possible, we stuck to following the directions on packages. Or spreading cream cheese and raisins on SOLDIER-issue ration bars, which was a surprisingly edible combination. 

My nose also picked up humans—more than one, although I hadn't yet learned how to distinguish how many—at least one dog, and the smells of chocobo and sun-warmed wood that pervaded the entire farm. 

We hadn't taken many steps past the door when my sister Anna, wearing a gingham apron and looking very domestic, emerged from the kitchen, drying her hands on a dishtowel. 

"Vincent, you did make it! After what Rayleigh told us, I wasn't sure you were going to." 

I shrugged. "It took some arranging. And I'm still on call if something serious happens." And Zack Fair had threatened me with a can of glitter spray if I didn't return to Midgar at the appropriate time so that he could spend New Year's Day with his girlfriend . . . but that could stay strictly between us. 

A stranger's head—that of a young woman somewhere Aerith's' or Tifa's age—poked itself around the edge of the doorframe. Her eyes went round. "Oh. You're _real_." Then she blinked, and a whole bunch of other words fell out of her mouth. "You know General Sephiroth really well, right? So you must know the answers to all my questions. Like, what's his favourite food, and is it true that chocobos hate him, and—" 

"_Allison!_" Anna snapped. "Your uncle will be here for several days. At least let the poor man get settled before you pepper him with questions." 

"I probably won't answer most of them anyway," I said—although I was tempted to tell her about the ration bars with cream cheese, just to see her expression. "Sephiroth isn't a public figure by choice, and I am not going to destroy what little privacy he has left. Bad enough that one of the Turks starts rumours about him whenever she's bored." 

Rayleigh's eyebrows jumped. "'She' . . . Not Cissnei." 

I nodded. 

"I'm surprised you ever found out." 

"Tseng caught her and told Veld," I explained briefly. _And Veld and I had a talk._ "Since then, she's been under orders to avoid the Silver Elite." 

Rayleigh wasn't stupid, and although she hadn't been head of the Science Department for very long, she was learning about Shinra's internal politics quickly. Her non-expression told me that she was picking up on most of what I hadn't said. Possibly even including the fact that Cissnei was still allowed to mess with Red Leather and Darkest Knight and Zack Fair's Puppy Love as much as she wanted. 

"We shouldn't leave them standing in the hall, Mom," Estoran said. 

"Quite right," Anna said. "Rayleigh, I don't have to tell you where your room is. Vincent, I've put you in the new wing, with Grandma—Estoran has your old room now. Follow me—and Allie, you get back in the kitchen and keep an eye on that pot!" 

The girl made a face like a peeved chipmunk and retreated back into the kitchen. Anna led me through the house to what had once been a back door, but now opened on an additional hallway. 

"I'm sorry about Allison," she said when the door was closed behind us. 

"Rayleigh warned me, so I was expecting something of the sort," I said. 

"Still, if she gets to be too much trouble, please tell me." 

"She's just a kid, Anna, and I'm only here for a few days. I can handle her." In fact, I could probably push her away from SOLDIER-fandom for the rest of her life just by telling her some select truths. I wouldn't, though. I was quite capable of cruelty, but it wasn't something I enjoyed—it was a tool that I used only after careful thought, and there wasn't even nearly enough at stake here for me to deploy it. 

The hallway was short and stubby, with one door to either side and one at the end. Anna opened the door on the left for me, and I stepped inside. 

Well. She certainly hadn't given me the worst room in the house (that was up under the eaves, slightly leaky, and probably being used by someone from the younger generation). This room was more than large enough to hold a queen-sized bed, a dresser, and a desk. The bed immediately drew the eye, or more accurately, the coverlet did, with its bright red fabric, elaborately pieced and embroidered in the traditional Wutainese style. I knew whose hands had made it. 

"She sticks mostly to cushions and such now—says that trying to hold up too much cloth is hard on her hands," Anna said. "This was the last really big piece she made." 

"And you put it in a guest room?" I wasn't sure how that made me feel. 

She shrugged. "It impresses the clients. We have more of them staying overnight now. The inn in Panglis closed down a few years ago, so there's no other place to stay until you get to Corel. Anyway, dinner's in two hours. Come to the main room at least ten minutes before that so that Rayleigh and I can introduce you around, or I'll never hear the end of it _and_ we'll end up eating late." 

I expected her to leave then, but instead she stepped a little closer and wrapped her arms around me in a quick hug. I returned it a bit awkwardly, mindful of her fragile, unenhanced bones. 

"It's good to have you home," she said. 

It was the sort of thing there was no point in arguing about, no matter what I thought.


	2. Chapter 2

The introductions were . . . interesting, in the sense of the legendary Wutainese curse about "interesting times". I didn't mind all that much, since I had no real sense of attachment to most of these people, but I knew Anna might end up having a difficult time of it for a week or two until they simmered down again. 

Everyone went quiet when I entered the room, making me regret that I hadn't put in the effort to enter silently and unnoticed instead. While Anna's family weren't the enemy, I wasn't sure how many of _them_ knew that. I put on an impassive facade, walked over to an empty chair (one of the few, wooden and unupholstered and older than I was), and sat down, keeping my hand well away from Cerberus. 

I had . . . grown used to ordinary people either being afraid of me or not noticing I was there, I suppose. Not this mixture of happy, curious, and hostile gazes. 

I stared right back at them, doing my best to fit names to the faces of those I hadn't met yet. Anna's husband, Nathan, had to be the man with the salt-and-pepper hair and the stray fragment of bedding straw from the stables clinging to his trouser leg. Jennifer, Anna's much younger half-sister by her father's second marriage (thus no relation to me) would be the middle-aged woman wearing the denim skirt and dangling earrings, and the balding man with the moustache beside her would be her husband Maxwell, who worked as a mechanic in Rocket Town. Their son Farnell was about fifteen, heavy-set and muscular like his father, with dark, curly hair. They also had a daughter, Tara, who was about twelve, with a slender build that was all knees and elbows. She wore glasses so large and thick that it was difficult to see past them to what she actually looked like. 

Including myself, there were ten people in the room, and I found myself checking hands, belts, pockets, and loose or concealing garments for signs of weapons. I reminded myself that this was not a mission, but habit can be something of a straitjacket. I also rechecked the exits from the room, although I already knew where they were and where they went. 

The problems started after we'd performed the awkward dance of introductions, when Nathan gave me a flinty look and said, "Y'know, in these parts it's considered bad manners to wear a hand-cannon like that to dinner. I don't allow guns at my table." 

"I'll take a tray, then," I said evenly. Tara put her hand over her mouth—half-shocked and half-laughing and not wanting anyone to see either, I diagnosed. 

"Nonsense," Anna said, her eyes flashing with surprising anger. "Just _whose_ table are we talking about here, Nathan Pruitt? Vincent is welcome in _my_ dining room no matter what he brings with him. Or who." 

Clearly, there were strands here from a prior conversation that I knew nothing about. 

"I still think he looks like a damned vampire," her husband muttered. Anna glared at him, but didn't say anything. Probably hoping that I hadn't heard Nathan, since a normal human shouldn't have been able to make out his words. 

«Is there a point to this bizarre social interaction?» 

Of course, I hadn't been human in quite some time. 

_Male posturing and dominance displays,_ I told Chaos, wishing that I dared speak aloud—it was easier to be certain I'd communicated what I'd intended if I let the words pass my lips. 

«Ah, I see. This is his territory, but you're the superior predator, and it's making him nervous. But you don't want to change things, because you don't intend to stay.» 

_Close enough._ I'd given up on explaining to Chaos how human society really worked. Analogies based on animal or monster behaviour seemed to be easier for my uninvited mental guest to make sense of. And . . . in some ways, he was right. 

"I don't want you waving weapons around where my kids can see them," Jennifer said, and then went white when I turned my attention on her. It was enough to make me wonder just what stories she had heard about SOLDIER . . . or about the Turks, if anyone here had ever found out about that facet of my past. 

"You mean you haven't done the gun-safety and here's-how-in-emergencies thing with them yet?" Allison said unexpectedly. "Mom and Dad rammed it down my throat when I was, like, six. Just in case a bagnadrana or something showed up while I was outside alone." 

"Bagnadranas—monsters in general—don't just 'show up' in Rocket Town," Maxwell said, smoothing his moustache with a forefinger. 

"Except for that time a couple of months ago," Rayleigh said. "There have been a lot of monsters popping up where they shouldn't lately. Uncle Vincent's been sent everywhere from Wutai to Icicle Inn to the southeastern islands to keep them under control." 

"That's what I don't understand," Jennifer said. "Why doesn't Shinra _do_ something?" 

Rayleigh didn't _quite_ roll her eyes. "Shinra _is_ doing something, but this situation didn't arise overnight, and we can't _fix_ it overnight. We're working as fast as we can, and trying to protect everyone in the meanwhile. While dealing with the various messes that the previous Board of Directors left behind, and some of those are . . . very bad." 

"You're still having nightmares." It wasn't a question—I could tell. 

"I'd be more worried if I _stopped_ having them," Rayleigh said. "Considering." 

"Rayleigh . . ." Anna looked at her older daughter with concern. 

"I don't get it," Maxwell said. "How bad can it be?" 

"The previous head of the Science Department conducted a number of unethical experiments," I said—the Board of Directors had already agreed that there was no point in trying to salvage Hojo's reputation, or those of the men he had killed. Agreed after Sephiroth had splintered the edge of the conference table when Scarlet had suggested sweeping everything under the rug, that is. "The late President looked the other way because Hojo sold him a bill of goods about a location with endless, exploitable mako . . . and because he had a brain tumour impairing his judgement." That had come out during the autopsy, and I had to admit that it made sense, since the Regulus Shinra I had known during my early years in the Turks would have recognized Hojo's Promised Land theories as too good to be true, and kept him on a much shorter leash. 

"And whenever we find a new secret lab, I have to go through it and make sure everything is disposed of properly," Rayleigh said. "It's the animal specimens that give me the nightmares. Some of the things Hojo did . . ." She shuddered. "And we're constantly finding human remains as well. So far, everything we've been able to trace was surgical waste from military hospitals, but I keep worrying that something else is going to turn up." Which was not _quite_ true, but at least everything—every_one_—they had found so far had already been dead, according to what Veld had told me. 

Rayleigh's comments made the room so quiet that the soundspace became dominated by the ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece, until the silence was broken by slow footsteps and the thud of a cane. 

"So many long faces at such a joyful time of year." The words were accented and lightly salted with sarcasm. 

Rayleigh forced a smile as the speaker shuffled forward into the light. "It's my fault—I brought work home with me." 

«That is the person you came here to see?» 

_Yes. Now, be quiet. Please._

Had she always been so small? Of course, I had been twelve the last time I had seen her, and not especially big for my age. It was only in my teens that I had shot up to my current considerable height. But surely she had stood straighter then, her hair iron grey rather than the pure white it was now. Nevertheless, her eyes were still alert as they swept the room. 

She wore a cotton kimono in plain light blue, which she had no doubt sewn herself, and a pair of well-worn slippers. She still wore her hair up, pinned in place by lacquered hairsticks, and at her throat hung the engraved jade pendant my grandfather had given her long ago. She wore her wedding ring on the same chain. 

She spotted me almost immediately, and ambled over to me. "Vin. They told me you were coming back, and I did not believe them, but here you are in front of me. Why did you tell us you were dead, you horrible child?" 

I shook my head. "It was said on my behalf when I was in no condition to argue. I'm sorry, _obaachan_." 

She swatted me on the shoulder with the open palm of her hand, as she might have when I was ten and she was looking after me while my mother was spending time with her new husband and daughter—gatherings at which I hadn't been welcome. "And instead of a nice letter saying you were alive after all, you send us a two-sentence note asking about some things you had in storage. Even that father of yours had better manners than that." 

"I acted wrongly, and I beg your forgiveness," I said in Wutainese, rising to offer her a proper bow of contrition. 

"Well, at least you haven't forgotten all your manners," she said in the same language. "Bad enough that I have outlived my daughter, but to outlive her son as well . . . it was almost beyond bearing." 

She wrapped her arms around me, and I found myself returning an embrace for the second time that day. Still a little awkwardly, but this time . . . it felt warm. 

Jennifer's son Farnell was the one who broke the moment. "I'm hungry," he said, in the type of whisper that was meant to be overheard. 

"It _is_ about time for supper," Anna agreed, and led the way into the dining room. 

There were a few problems with seating, since Jennifer didn't want her children anywhere near me, and I didn't want to be a captive audience for Allison's questions. I ended up between Anna and _obaachan_, and across from Nathan, who glared at me whenever he looked up from his meal. I ignored him and concentrated on the subtle nuances my enhanced sense of taste was finding in the stew, and on figuring out who else was staring at me. Allison was a given, but Tara was a bit of a surprise. 

Everyone talked past me, which was almost relaxing for my Turk instincts. Overheard information could be analyzed and filed away at one's leisure, without having to make any kind of response. 

And then Estoran made a half-joking suggestion about introducing me to a young widow at one of the other farms. 

"I don't think that would be a good idea." Rayleigh responded before I could. 

"Oh, so you've got a girl back in Midgar?" Estoran was beginning to remind me of Zack Fair . . . in all the worst possible ways. 

"I'm in a relationship, yes," was all I said, hoping that would get him to drop it. 

Unfortunately, Allison picked up the ball. "'In a relationship,'" she repeated. "Does that mean that the rumours about you and General Sephiroth are actually _true_?" 

I shrugged. 

"Uncle Vincent, you _kissed him_. In _public_. There's pictures of it all over the Worldwide Network!" 

Now everyone except Rayleigh was staring at me, with expressions ranging from sympathy to amusement to hostility. I repressed a sigh. 

"If you mean that incident at the military airstrip outside Midgar, that had nothing to do with romance, and everything to do with Sephiroth convincing Director Scarlet that he wasn't interested in her. She wouldn't take a hint even when he just about hit her over the head with one, so I think he would have kissed a behemoth if he'd thought it would get her to back off. I played along because I sympathized with him." 

"Oh," Allison said, sounding disappointed. Everyone else was already looking back down at their food. "But you are on a first-name basis with him." 

"There are only four First Class SOLDIERs right now. Of course we all know each other." I didn't particularly care what Allison told others about me, but as I'd told her before, I would fight for every shred of privacy I could give Sephiroth. Fortunately, Rayleigh knew about that, and agreed with me. It verged on being a conspiracy: all of SOLDIER and all the Turks knew Sephiroth and I were a couple, and most of Shinra's top administrative staff had figured it out even if no one had told them, but no one was talking. The implicit threat of Turk-style violence I tried to put out might have had something to do with that, though. 

"You really aren't going to tell me anything I didn't already guess, are you?" 

"_Allison!_" Anna gave her youngest daughter one of those inimitable parental Disapproving Looks. "Vincent is here to _relax_, not to field your questions!" 

"My training in resisting interrogation may be rusty, but I think I can handle her," I said dryly. 

Estoran blinked. "They actually train you in that?" 

Once more, I applied my all-purpose shrug. SOLDIER, from what I understood, got a half-hour seminar on the topic that added up to, _string them along for as long as you can, and expect to get shot at the end of it._ Turk training was . . . more elaborate and specific. Also a lot more painful. 

The bowls were mostly empty now, and young Farnell was fidgeting. Supper broke up as some of the adults went to fetch coffee for themselves, and others moved to do the dishes. 

"Vin." _Obaachan_ laid a hand lightly on my elbow. "I would like to speak with you." 

"Of course. Now?" 

She nodded. "I think we have a great deal to talk about, and I am in no hurry to sleep. My dreams . . . but I expect you know about those sorts of dreams, if your own are not worse. As I grow older, it becomes more and more difficult not to think of the ones who died." 

That, I certainly did understand. And I knew that _obaachan_ knew more about nightmares than most civilians: as a young woman, she'd been part of a Xiennese resistance group, even though her father had been north Wutainese. Her little rebellion had never gotten any further in their "fight" against the Wutainese government than publishing some questionable pamphlets and posters, but the government had gotten rather violent when they'd tracked them down. _Obaachan_ had escaped in one piece, but several others hadn't. 

She'd never talked to me about any of it when I was a child. I'd done some research after joining Shinra and found her name in the Turks' historical files. 

"I do have a great deal to tell you," I said, and followed her out of the dining room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Vincent's family tree on this side got severely complicated by serial monogamy, for whatever reason. To set everything out as clearly as possible for anyone who's having a hard time following along:
> 
> First, Grimoire Valentine married Vincent and Anna's mother (_obaachan_'s daughter). They divorced after Vincent was born.
> 
> Vincent's mother later remarried. Anna was her daughter by her new husband. Their mother died when Vincent was twelve and Anna was four or five (can't remember which I said in the previous stories).
> 
> Some years later, Anna's father remarried. Jennifer was his daughter by his new wife.
> 
> Thus, Vincent and Anna are half-siblings, sharing a mother. Anna and Jennifer are half-siblings, sharing a father. And Vincent and Jennifer are, as he says, no relation.


	3. Chapter 3

_Obaachan_ hadn't been able to bring much with her when she'd left Wutai, but the few things she did still have, she treasured and displayed: a fan, a kimono that had been hers as a child, a tea set. I had ducked briefly into my own room to fetch the tea I had bought for her in Midgar. Before I seated myself, I bowed and offered her the small package. 

"This is only a poor gift, but it is all I have to give," I said in Wutainese. It was what we had always spoken when the two of us were alone. 

"I am certain it is worthy," she said ritually as she accepted it. Then she broke with tradition, and instead of setting it aside, asked, "Vin, how much did this cost you?" 

"In comparison to the amount of money I make? Not very much, although I could have gotten it for less if I had thought to shop for it while I was in Wutai." 

"You were . . ." She shook her head. "_Mou._ I suppose your work takes you all over the world." 

"It does," I agreed. 

Now she set the tea aside, and sat for a moment, contemplating me. "A great deal has happened to you—not just that you left this place as a boy and now return as a man, but other things as well. I would like you to tell me . . . whatever you can." 

"Some of it won't be pleasant to listen to," I warned her. "I have killed a number of people in Shinra's service, and often not for the best of reasons. Sometimes for no real reason at all, except that a fat man in a large, fancy office wanted them dead. I made some very bad choices." 

"And yet, you are still here, and you are still of my blood. Now. Talk. Or I'll make you stand in the corner the way I did when you were still a child." 

I admit, that drew a flicker of a smile from me, one that vanished again as I organized my thoughts. I drew the early, less-important parts of my story in broad brushstrokes—the resentment between myself and the father who had taken me from the only home I could remember, joining Shinra at sixteen in the hope of escaping him, being spotted by a Turk recruiter when I displayed my marksmanship skills. Meeting Veld, and following him down the rabbit hole that was life as a Turk. _Obaachan_ frowned as I gave her a skeletal outline of what the Turks actually did—few outside the company knew the whole story. It was hard for me to remember how I'd felt about such matters when I'd first joined up. Too much had happened since. In fact, it sometimes felt like I was talking about someone else as I narrated that period of my life. 

Inevitably, however, my narrative reached Nibelheim, and Lucrecia, and there . . . there I was inclined to linger. 

"It was as though she had brought colour back into my world," I said in a low voice, staring down at my gloved hands. "I wasn't even sure when it had seeped away, but she . . . I thought I was in love. I know better now, but at the time, it seemed . . ." I shook my head. "But I wasn't what she wanted. She refused me, and I stepped aside for the man she did want. Hojo was the vice-head of the lab, and I considered him a vile creature even then, but for Lucrecia's sake, I attended their wedding, and wished them well." 

"Oh, Vin . . ." _Obaachan_ reached over and covered my hand—my left hand, the mutilated one, although she didn't know that—with her own. Her fingers tightened around mine as I told her about Lucrecia's pregnancy, about the experiments . . . about finding the woman I'd thought I loved curled into a little knot on the floor of a bathroom at three in the morning, shaking and crying silently as she fought a losing battle with nightmares and hallucinations and what mako and Jenova cells were doing to her body. About confronting Hojo and being shot and about the last thing I carried with me down into the dark being a mixture of guilt and shame. 

"After that, I don't remember much of anything for a long, long time," I admitted. "From the surviving records, Lucrecia and Hojo collaborated to piece me back together. I still don't know what she offered him to make him help, beyond the lure of having another specimen to play with. They didn't have any human spare parts to transplant, or maybe Hojo found it more amusing to use other materials—I have bone and tissue grafts from several different monsters, as well as a materia implanted in my chest. What I regret, though, is not having been able to be there for Lucrecia when her son was born . . . and Hojo took the boy away from her without ever permitting her to touch him. She survived for another two years afterwards, but . . ." 

"Vin. You did everything you could. This story is tragic, but it is not your fault. _None_ of it is your fault." 

"Isn't it? I could have killed him, _obaachan_. I could have killed him so easily, before he had had a chance to harm them." 

My grandmother's expression became stern. "That kind of killing is not how civilized people solve problems, Vin." 

Could I still consider myself civilized? Could I still consider myself a person at all? No, that way lay madness. I stared down at my hands again—at our hands, for hers was still wrapped loosely around mine. "When I returned fully to consciousness, I thought I had gone insane. There were . . . voices in my head . . . and when I reacted with fear and anger, one of them broke loose and took control of my body, and there, in an underground vault off the Nibelheim laboratory, I transformed into a monster. It was only temporary, but it terrified me. I was so frightened of what I might do that I locked myself away in a box." There was no need for her to know that that "box" had been a coffin. "I spent twenty years there, although I didn't realize at the time that it had been so long. I was too busy trying to understand what had happened, and trying to get the _creatures_ Hojo had somehow placed inside my body under control. And then, about three months ago, someone woke me up." 

From there, the events were at least recent and clear in my mind, which made them easier to pick through . . . but no less emotional. Sephiroth was both easy and difficult to talk about. Easy, because he was always on my mind. Difficult, because it meant revealing my _current_ emotional state, as opposed to my past one. I'd spoken only a few sentences about him, ones that I believed to be neutral-sounding, when _obaachan_ interrupted me. 

"You love him a great deal." 

"I do." There was no point in lying about it. 

"I can see why you were so careful at supper to avoid speaking your lover's name. That foolish girl would have been all over you. As for what _I_ think . . ." _Obaachan_ shrugged. "Never would have taken you for a cut-sleeve, boy, but if you love each other and you're happy together, that's all that matters. It isn't as though you would want me to leave the farm to you, so it doesn't matter to me whether you have children or not—Anna's already done her part there, and yours as well. I just hope I get the chance to meet this man of yours before I die. I want to see if he's everything you think he is." 

"You have several good years left in you," I said. 

She shook her head. "I'm getting past the good years, Vin. Might have a few bad ones left, I suppose. If you'd slept another few months, I might never have seen you again. Bring him by soon, do you hear me? Just for a few hours, while the girl's at school." 

I wasn't sure what Sephiroth would make of her, given his lack of family, but I did want them to meet. Two of the most important people in my life—a group which didn't have many survivors. 

"You seem to have achieved some happiness in spite of everything that has happened," _obaachan_ added. "The gods must be fond of you to have put you through so much hell before you got there." 

In my head, Chaos laughed. As did one of the others—I think it was Hellmasker. Or at least, I couldn't imagine Death Gigas having such a high-pitched giggle, and as far as I knew, it didn't understand language well enough to react to her words. 

"If there are gods, they lack a focus minute enough to distinguish individual humans," I said, and _obaachan_ smiled wryly. 

"Perhaps you are right," she said. "But now, I think it is time for us both to find our beds. Nightmares or no, Nathan will insist on waking the house before dawn as he goes out to the barns. That man spoils his birds beyond belief." 

"I seem to remember someone else doing the same." 

"I was younger then," _obaachan_ retorted. 

It would have been appropriate to say something flattering, I knew, but I had never been good at that sort of thing. In the old days, when we'd been handed a mission that needed a glib tongue, it had always been Veld who had played the front man, while I lurked at the back looking armed and dangerous. 

"Maybe it's just as well if he wakes me up," I offered at last. "I wouldn't want to oversleep." _Again._

"Good night, Vin," was all _obaachan_ said in response. 

"Good night," I replied. 

Rather than go straight to bed, I opted to have a shower—unless they'd done some plumbing, the house had only one (there was a second bathroom, but it was older and its bathing facilities were limited to a clawfoot tub), so there were long slices of the morning and evening when it was unavailable, but I couldn't hear anyone else moving around right now. 

The door to the bathroom was tight against the frame and took a bit of force to pull into place. I locked it before undressing, since I didn't want anyone walking in on me. My scars were bad enough to make the current crop of Shinra scientists wince in sympathy. Only Sephiroth seemed unbothered by them. 

«He appreciates the lived-in look they give your body. Your mate is insane, but in a good way.» 

"I'm so glad you approve—" I fell silent as I heard someone turn the doorknob, but continued pulling off my shirt. Even if the door was locked, I preferred that people not hear me talking aloud to Chaos. 

I felt a draft against my bare back, and spun around. 

Anna's sister Jennifer stood framed in the doorway. She screamed, and I repressed a wince at the loud noise coming from only a few feet away. Enhanced hearing reacts poorly to that sort of thing, even if it doesn't do any damage. 

There was no way to defuse this damnable situation, so I took a step backward, leaned against the sink, and awaited the inevitable. Since there was no other exit from the room (one window, but it was too small for even a child to fit through), and I wasn't carrying an Exit materia, the only other thing I could have done was attack the person blocking the door, and that was a clear overreaction even by Turk standards. 

«I could break down the wall,» Chaos suggested. 

_NO!!!_

«Spoilsport.» 

Seconds later, most of the household came wandering in to see what was going on. I endured the stares with gritted teeth. 

"What the hell happened?" That was Nathan, playing the man of the house as the others crowded around him. 

Jennifer was shaking and clearly not coherent. Well, at least that let me get my version out first. "I had come in here to shower. She opened what I _thought_ was a locked door, saw me, and screamed." 

"The lock on that door hasn't worked since the frame got so deformed," Anna said. "I forgot you wouldn't know, or that we put in another bathroom in the new wing . . ." She was staring at my chest. At the scars. I pretended it didn't bother me, but I would have felt less naked if I had dropped my pants and she had spent the same amount of time staring fixedly at my crotch. 

"This isn't a circus," Rayleigh said from the back of the group. "Back off and give the poor man some privacy. And as for you, Aunt Jen, calm _down_. You'd think you'd never seen someone with scars before." 

"His ch-chest is _glowing_," the unnerved woman replied. 

Rayleigh rolled her eyes. "There's a materia under there. They tend to glow when there's energy passing through them." 

"Why would you—" 

"Small lightning materia are commonly used as power sources for any number of devices, including medical ones," the director of Shinra's Science Department said. Certainly, telling that irrelevant truth was easier than explaining what the protomateria really was. "Leave him be," she added, and Anna blinked and finally, _finally_ pulled the door shut. 

I took the damned shower anyway, scrubbing long and hard to get rid of the intangible-but-unpleasant feeling that something vile was smeared across my skin. It shouldn't have bothered me so much. Many people had seen my scars. Zack Fair. Lucrecia. Rayleigh. Hojo, and every wretched lab tech he had ever hired. Sephiroth. Chaos, for that matter. Why should I feel . . . violated . . . this time? It wasn't simply because it hadn't been my choice, because I hadn't _chosen_ to let Hojo see the ravaged mess that he'd made of my body either, and it had never felt quite this bad. But Hojo had regarded the scars _clinically_. These people, civilians with no knowledge of medicine beyond first aid, had reacted with fear and disgust. Implying that I wasn't merely something _other_ than human, but something _lesser_. 

«You are most certainly _not_ "lesser", host-mine. If you were weak, I would have overwhelmed you long ago.» 

I had to be in a terrible state if _Chaos_ was trying to comfort me. 

_They don't matter,_ I reminded myself. _You came here for one purpose, and you've now fulfilled it. They can think whatever they like about you._

That I still cared about the opinions of other humans was perhaps the best proof that I was still human as well, somewhere deep down in my core.


	4. Chapter 4

I slept very little. In the end, I gave up even trying. Before anyone else stirred for breakfast, I dressed—in civilian clothes, jeans and a flannel shirt—and strapped Cerberus to my thigh and went out to the barn, on the grounds that the chocobos wouldn't care who I was or what I looked like. 

Most of them were still asleep too, in the dim hours before dawn, but there was one restless green hen at the back who kept rising to make a circuit of her stall, stopping, settling for a moment, and then getting to her feet for another turn. Knowing that this wasn't normal behaviour, I went to check on her, and found that she had a leg injury—it looked like some other chocobo had torn into her with its beak, right where the feathers met the thick scales of the lower leg—and had ripped off the dressing and ground straw and dust from the stable floor into the open wound, which no doubt stung. 

Cleaning it out was going to sting her even worse, I knew, so I went and found a halter, rope, and ankle cuffs, as well as disinfectant, clean cloths, and a fresh dressing. Everything was in the same places it had been long ago, although the labels on the contents of the veterinary kit were different and I had to squint at several bottles before I found the right disinfectant. 

I trussed the chocobo up and parted her feathers to clean the wound, ignoring the way the sting of the disinfectant made her hiss and fight the ropes. I knew it was better to finish quickly and soothe her afterwards. With her head held by two ropes and her ankles shackled, she couldn't hurt herself (or me, but that was secondary). 

The lights in the barn came on just as I was taping a new gauze pad into place. The chocobo hissed like a steam engine as someone leaned over the stall door. 

"You," Nathan said, sounding surprised. "Couldn't sleep, huh?" 

I shrugged. 

"Well, looks like you're doing a decent-enough job there. Yukiko-_obaachan_ did say you used to have a fair way with the birds. Heather there keeps getting marked up, and she _always_ tears the dressings off if we don't keep an eye on her. Figured I'd have to put a new one on her myself." 

I finished securing the dressing, then wound a bandage loosely over it to give Heather another layer to work through before she could bare the wound again. Nathan went to her head to soothe her, and by the time I was done, the bird had stopped hissing. I gave my . . . brother-in-law (great Leviathan!) an inquiring look. 

"Yeah, it's safe to take off the shackles now," Nathan said. "She's a good bird, this one. Just can't keep her beak to herself." 

I took the ankle cuffs off Heather the chocobo and straightened up. The bird shook herself and _kweh_'d several times before turning away to investigate the fresh greens Nathan had just dumped into her feeding trough. 

"You're a quiet guy, aren't you, Vincent?" Nathan smiled when I used my all-purpose shrug again, but it faded quickly. "Look, I know I kinda got off on the wrong foot with you, and I'm sorry about that. It's just . . . Anna's been talking about you ever since she found out you were still alive, and you . . ." 

"She's built me up in her head to be much more than I ever really was," I said. "I'm not a safe person to know. Unfortunately, telling Anna to avoid me doesn't work, and while I could probably force her to give up, I suspect it would require extreme action, and I'm not willing to do that to her." 

"I don't think I want to know what you think of as 'extreme action', given the crap you've likely been through," Nathan said. "But Anna is—" 

"Dad? Who are you talking to? Oh, hi, Uncle Vincent." Estoran smiled at me, then turned back to his father. "We've got those three groups coming up to show off their new chicobos to the relatives or whatever—do I need to tidy the exercise areas?" 

"Probably a good idea. Vincent can help me finish up here—if you don't mind." Nathan glanced at me, and I shrugged and nodded. It wasn't as though I had a packed schedule. "Right. I need a bale of pahsana, and one of mimett. Toss 'em down for me, would you?" 

I climbed to the upper level, found the plastic-wrapped bales of greens, and tossed down the first two matching Nathan's specifications. Needing a full bale of mimett suggested the farm was housing more racing chocobos than had been the case during my childhood, although I expected that the breeding program here was still aimed at producing friendly, even-tempered birds for pleasure riding and local transport. 

It was odd, how easy it was to settle back into the rhythm of something I hadn't done for decades: feeding the birds, preening their feathers, checking for mites, filing talons and beaks, leading them out to the paddock. Fortunately, Nathan wasn't about to dump stall-mucking duty on me—I might have drawn the line there, but that had always been the responsibility of hired hands like Mike, whom I'd spoken with when I'd gotten off the helicopter. 

Nathan trusted me only up to a point, I observed with amusement. He went in to check the eggs and the hens brooding them himself. Two greens and a yellow, and I'd been leading as many greens as yellows outside. They had to have been breeding for them, although that was common enough in mountain country. 

By the time we went in for breakfast, we'd fallen into something of an accord. Nathan spoke to the chocobos more than me, which suited me just fine. The birds were quite submissive to me, possibly sensing Chaos and its rude comments about them. 

Anna raised her eyebrows at me when I responded to her call for breakfast along with the other men, but it was Nathan she spoke to. "Landsen called and said he wanted to take his sister and her husband and a couple of nephews up into the hills. I told him this was the worst part of a bad year for search crowns, but . . ." 

" . . . he wouldn't listen to you because you don't have a dick and he's way too impressed that he does," Nathan finished, scowling. "I'll talk to him when he gets here, but there may not be anything I can do. Those're his birds—we're just boarding them." 

"I know, but . . ." 

"But the birds don't deserve to be owned by that jerk," Allison said from off to the side. "The nephews deserve everything they get, though, or at least the one who tried to get handsy with me last year does." 

"He tried to—" Anna looked furious. 

Allison shrugged. "It was no big deal—Est poked at him with a pitchfork, and he backed off. If it happens again, I'll just hide behind Uncle Vincent. None of those idiots is brave enough to go up against a SOLDIER." 

I just hoped that didn't result in my accidentally killing some stupid boy who was, as Nathan had said, much too impressed with his own maleness . . . but not necessarily evil, despite that. Some of them did come to their senses as they got older. 

The various parties who wanted to spend time with their chocobos over the midwinter holiday began to arrive around mid-morning. I found a place to stand where I was out of the way and mostly in shadow, and watched them while performing old Turk practice exercises—what could I learn about these people from the way they dressed, acted, spoke? Of course, there wasn't a one of them that wasn't wealthy. Poor people couldn't afford to board chocobos that they barely rode at someone else's farm. Beyond that, I deduced origins, occupations, petty interpersonal conflicts, and now and again, an illness or addiction. That man who kept surreptitiously drinking from a small metal flask when he thought no one was looking was beyond suspect, for instance, and the woman with a flushed face who kept smiling at nothing. 

I identified Landsen the moment he stepped out of his car. Fancy tooled leather boots. With spurs, which only a blind fool ever wears when riding. Chocobos aren't stupid, and jamming a piece of sharp steel into one's ribs is a recipe for being thrown off, then kicked and pecked when you're down. The other man and the two teenaged boys who got out of the same car looked like more of the same, and the woman was mousy, dressed in drab, shapeless, colourless clothing as though trying to blend into the background. I pegged her instantly as an abuse victim. Not that I was about to try to do anything about it. My meddling would doubtless just make things worse. Especially since the only type of persuasion I was at all skilled at involved bullets. 

I drifted closer to the group when they started arguing with Nathan. 

"—can't stop us if we want to go!" one of the youths was saying. 

"No, I can't," Nathan said. "But I have to warn you if I don't want insurance people all over my ass when you get yourselves eaten." 

"Problem here?" I asked, and they all turned to face me, some of them pretty quickly. I hadn't been trying to sneak up on them, but some things are second nature, and this was an oblivious crew. 

"And who the hell are you?" one of the men sneered, looking me up and down. 

"Vincent Valentine. SOLDIER First Class," I added, curious to see whether he'd believe me and back off, or double down and try to be even more obnoxious. 

It got me a look up and down, and a snort. "Skinny for a SOLDIER, and aren't you out of uniform?" 

"They don't have to wear those when they're on vacation," Nathan said, rolling his eyes. "Vincent's my brother-in-law. We hadn't seen him for a while, so he managed to wrangle a few days to visit over the midwinter holiday." 

"Hmph. Rhett Landsen." The man with the tooled leather boots offered me his hand, and when I accepted it, squeezed down hard. I could have ignored it, but instead I squeezed back until I felt his bones grate together. That hand was going to be one solid bruise, and he deserved every bit of it. When he finally let go, he shook it out and gave me an odd look. "Don't suppose you can convince Nate here to be a little less of a busybody, can you, Vince?" 

I shrugged. "If he's right about there being more than the normal number of search crowns this year, he's right that a civilian shouldn't be going up into the mountains." Search crowns look like mushrooms with long stems and multiple toothy mouths. They aren't quite sessile, but move around slowly in groups and plant themselves in what they think are favourable locations. And they can attack from a distance. Often, they don't take notice of an approaching animal—or person—until its shadow falls across them. Which means that it's possible to walk right into the middle of a cluster if you're not paying attention, and then all hell breaks loose when they realize you're there. 

I'd hunted a lot of search crowns as a boy. We'd had them mostly cleared out of the area for a while, but that had been thirty-odd years ago. More than time enough for them to seep back onto the property from higher up in the hills. 

"Why not just stay in the valley?" I added. 

"'Cause then we won't be able to see it," one of the boys muttered sullenly. 

Nathan narrowed his eyes. "See what?" 

"The body." 

"What body?" 

The other boy looked up. "They say that there's a cave up there somewhere that has a woman's body frozen in mako crystal inside of it." 

"Going up into monster-riddled country just to check out some story circulating on the Worldwide Network is pretty damned stupid, boy," Nathan said. 

Both boys glared at him. "It isn't just a story," the second one said, pulling out a PHS. "Here, look." 

It wasn't a good photo. Not only had it been taken with a PHS, but the flash that had been ineptly used to compensate for a short exposure in a darkened area had reflected off the surface of the crystal, obscuring what was inside. But even that vague image was enough for me to identify her. After all, there had been a time when I would have recognized her from behind in a lightless basement at midnight. 

I heard my gloves creak as my hands tightened into fists, and bit down on the edge of my tongue to keep myself from letting her name slip out. Admitting recognition would not benefit me here. Nor would it do her any good. 

_Lucrecia . . ._

Inside my head, I heard Chaos groan. «Not that worthless woman again! I thought you were done with her.» 

_She's Sephiroth's mother, and until now we didn't know what had happened to her. I need to find out for certain whether it's her._ And decide what I was going to do about it. I didn't know how Sephiroth would react, but one thing was certain: I was _not_ going to leave her in an unprotected cave for people to gawk at. At the very least, I needed to cut off access to the area. 

"If there _is_ a dead body there, it's a grave, not a sideshow," Nathan said firmly. "Only reason anyone should go up there is to bury her." 

"I think it may be Shinra's problem," I said. "She matches the description of a Shinra scientist who disappeared up near Nibelheim some years ago, but I'm going to need better pictures to confirm that so that we can inform her next-of-kin. And decide whether to remove her body, or seal the cave." 

Nathan looked at me, head tilted. "You're going up there?" 

Landsen was glaring at me. "After everything you two said to us, _you're_ going to go?" 

I returned his glare with a level look, and rested my hand on Cerberus' holster. "There's nothing up there that can hurt me. And . . ." I reached out, lightning-quick, and grabbed one of the boys by the shoulder, grinding down hard enough to bruise. I knew it wasn't nice of me, but I didn't have the time for a drawn-out confrontation designed to decide who was the alpha male. "You're going to tell me everything you know about the location of that cave."


	5. Chapter 5

Unexpectedly, Nathan lent me one of his two black chocobos without my even having to ask. It had been more than twenty years since I had last ridden, and the bird had a horrible temperament, but that was just additional incentive to regain my skills quickly. Once I was certain I would be able to ride the chocobo up the steep mountain paths without being thrown, I packed a light travelling kit (greens for the chocobo, food for me, canteen, collapsible bucket, water purification tablets, tarp, blanket, spare bullets, survival-oriented materia loadout), told Rayleigh where I was going, and headed up into the hills. 

Given that it was winter, the temperature dropped rapidly as we approached the treeline. I barely noticed, but the chocobo fluffed his feathers for warmth whenever we slowed. On our first night in the mountains, it was the bird that got the only blanket, and I didn't bother even trying to sleep. I prowled the area within a mile of my chosen campsite, hunting search crowns in the dark, instead. By night, the pseudo-fungal monsters were oblivious to what was going on around them, and I could pull them up and kick them until they disintegrated into green sparkles without needing to waste bullets. I was wearing my sabatons now, which made kicking them quite efficient. By first light, I had collected more than a dozen hi-potions from among evaporating remains. 

The chocobo tried to buck me off when I turned his head in the direction of the Upland Basin once more. It was unfortunate that he was a black, and thus valuable breeding stock. Any other bird with his temperament would have been gelded. 

_There's a waterfall that comes down into the basin,_ the boy's on-line directions had said, along with approximate latitude and longitude. _The cave is behind it. #weirdplaces #unsolvedmysteries_

I found the waterfall just before noon. The slickness of the rocks suggested that it wasn't wise to have even a surefooted black chocobo climb down so that I could see what was behind it, but if I fell from the rocks the worst that would happen was that I would turn into Chaos for a bit. 

«If you do, can I eat that bird?» 

"You don't even need to eat," I said, hobbling the chocobo so that he wouldn't run off. 

Inside my head, Chaos vented a frustrated growl. «Next time, we should just fly up.» 

"I don't trust you not to make a mess of the farm just on general principles, and I don't know how to work your wings—even if you'd let me." 

«This is getting tedious, host-mine.» 

I didn't bother pointing out that Chaos was the one responsible for the confrontational dynamic between us, and so _it_ was the one that was going to have to do the first work on smoothing it out. It was smart enough to figure that out for itself. 

I didn't, by some miracle, slip from the rocks by the waterfall and tumble into the deep, cold waters of the Upland Basin. Instead, I found a ledge, and an opening leading back into the dark, framed by greenish, crystalline formations: solidified mako coating the rocks. 

I moved inside slowly, giving my eyes time to adjust—although I wouldn't have needed a light even if I'd been unenhanced. There were larger mako crystals further back, and they glowed faintly. There were puddles of mako, too, or at least I assumed the glowing liquid was mako, even though very little of it was green. Yellow, orange . . . red. Stagnant mako. Like the pool that had once held Chaos. 

«That one's further back.» 

I stopped. "This is where they found you?" 

«Oh, yes. At first, I even thought it was a good thing. I didn't expect to spend the next several years in a bottle, and two decades after that in a coffin. For which I intend to hold a grudge for the rest of our mutual existence.» 

There was nothing I could do about that, I reflected as I rounded a shoulder of crystalline rock. In front of me, the cave opened up, and I saw . . . 

«_Vincent?_» 

"Lucrecia?" I breathed her name, searching the cavern with my eyes as I wondered if I had just heard a ghost. There! That crystal held more than just a shadow. 

She was as I remembered her, hanging suspended in the stone with that rope of pearls she had loved so much around her neck. Her eyes were closed, and her fine hair fell across her forehead in exactly the same way that her son's did across his. 

«_Vincent?_» 

"I'm here." I placed my good hand flat against the crystal. 

«She is unravelling, but not gone yet,» Chaos observed. «This place lacks a channel for her spirit to escape back into the Lifestream. She is trapped.» 

"Then we need to get her out." 

«I could, but why should I? She was the one that trapped me—trapped _us_—in you.» There was a chorus of growls from somewhere deeper inside my mind, where my more bestial co-walkers lurked. It was clear that there would be no help from any of them. 

«_Vincent . . . won't you please tell me? My son . . . Sephiroth . . . What happened to him? The child I never held . . ._» 

"He's . . ." _Not fine._ I knew that too well. But . . . "Scarred. As we all are. But strong. He's grown into a fine man. You should be proud of him." 

«_You know him?_» 

"I love him," I admitted. "With everything in me. We're . . . together." Why did I suddenly feel like the nervous teen trying to set up his first date with the beautiful girl known for having a gorilla of a father? 

«_Oh, Vincent . . . Thank you. Thank you so very much for looking after him. If you can give him even the tiniest percentage of what I should have . . ._» 

"I would say it was repayment for you saving my life . . . but it isn't. I chose him for himself. Like calling to like, I suppose." I wasn't going to tell her about the bad parts, I decided. About the nightmares of being dragged back to the labs that sometimes left Sephiroth tight-coiled, every muscle straining silently, as the early morning sun tried to fight through the Midgar smog. About the way that kindness from strangers didn't merely put him on his guard, but outright bewildered him. About Hojo having done his utmost to rip everything that made Sephiroth-the-individual out of his body and turn his son's flesh into a host for something else. 

«_I can't ask you to forgive me. I hurt you. And I hurt him. More than anything else. My sin . . ._» 

Inwardly, I sighed. I knew far too much about sin, and guilt, and whose forgiveness had meaning. "You hurt me, but I failed you, in a number of ways. That balances the scales between us. As for Sephiroth . . . I'm not the one you should be apologizing to for him, am I?" 

A long pause, during which I once again started to wonder if I was hallucinating her half of the conversation. 

«_I have no way to thank you. Not really. But . . . take this. I've been holding onto it for you for quite a while now._» 

There was a flash, and I covered my eyes. When I finally readjusted to the dim light of the cave, there was a gun lying on the ground in front of me, an old-style rifle with a polished wooden stock. I bent down slowly and picked it up, recognizing as I did so the grain of the wood and the small yellow-orange feather charm. _Death Penalty_. The only thing I had kept for myself from among my father's possessions. The name of the gunsmith who had made it wasn't known, but the rifle itself was a masterpiece, capable of delivering bullets at extreme range with precision despite the lack of modern telescopic sights . . . and I should be able to mount something if I decided I wanted to use it for sniping. 

I hadn't thought to look for it when I had left Nibelheim, and when Cloud and the troopers Sephiroth had sent with him to sweep the mansion for documents had brought back its empty case, I'd thought it was lost for good. I hadn't even bothered to ask Anna about it. 

I checked it to make sure it was empty, then dry-fired it at the floor of the cavern. The trigger moved smoothly. I was going to have to open it up and clean it to be sure, but it felt as though it had survived the years well. 

The Death Penalty had never been the true friend to me that Cerberus was, but it was still a useful weapon, and I was glad to have it back. 

"Thank you," I said. 

«_Vincent, I cannot return to the Lifestream. I have too much Jenova in me . . . impure . . . I hid myself here so that she could not reach me. Is Sephiroth . . . does he know?_» 

"Jenova is gone. I saw her blasted to ashes." 

«_Hojo would have protected—_» 

"Hojo is dead as well." I would leave it at that, since her journal indicated that she actually had loved the man, in some way that I still couldn't comprehend. "There are a few Jenova tissue cultures left, and some people who were injected with her cells. That's all. Sephiroth says that he can't hear her anymore." What we actually suspected—Sephiroth, Rayleigh, and I—was that if the surviving Jenova cells could be likened to deployed troops, _Sephiroth_ was now in the command position. We weren't certain, because he refused to experiment. 

«_Oh . . . then maybe . . ._» 

"I'm not leaving you here to be gawked at by curiosity-seekers," I said firmly. "You don't have to return to the Lifestream, but we need to move you somewhere safe." For which we would likely need explosives and a jackhammer and something to transport a large chunk of mako crystal out of the cave. Would it be possible to have a helicopter or an airship pick it up directly, or were we going to have to mount a crane at the lip of the cliff and lift it to level ground first? 

I shook my head. Such logistics weren't my job. Threatening someone in the Shinra hierarchy into paying for it might be, although there was far less of that sort of thing going on now than there had been mere months ago. 

"For now, though, I need to go." It wasn't what I wanted to say, but things would get much worse if anyone came looking for me. Going downhill was a bit easier than up, but it would still take a good day to get back to the farm, and Reno would be showing up the day after tomorrow. 

«_Thank you, Vincent. And . . . good-bye._» 

Was that a tear I saw through the crystal, trickling down over one perfect cheekbone? Surely not. Surely I had never meant that much to her. 

The grumpy black chocobo was slightly happier when I turned his head in the general direction of his nice warm barn in the lowlands and kneed him into motion. 

I slaughtered some more search crowns that night, but I also spent several hours lying on a smooth boulder looking up at the moon, and thinking empty thoughts. 

The chocobo nearly bolted into the barn when we reached the edge of the farmyard the next day, stopping only when I pulled so hard on the reins that his chin was down against his chest. I just hoped I hadn't chipped his beak, because Nathan would probably make me file it down myself, and that was never fun with a fractious, nippy bird. 

Anna was the one who met me at the barn door, to my surprise. "Vincent, are you alright?" 

I shrugged and took a step to the left, leading the idiot chocobo around her, but she was persistent. 

"There wasn't actually a body up there, was there?" 

"There was. I'm going to have to report it to Shinra." 

"Surely the police or whatever can take care of it." 

I shook my head. "There's a small potential for a biohazard. We're going to have to be careful until Rayleigh's people can find out for certain." 

"I don't understand." 

I turned to face her, ignoring the way the idiot chocobo pulled on his lead rope to try to get me heading back in what _he_ thought was the right direction. "She was a Shinra biologist who disappeared about twenty years ago, and some of what she was working with was dangerous. The body's well-preserved. It could be contaminated." 

"Someone you knew?" 

There was no hiding it. "Someone I failed." 

"Oh, Vincent . . ." Anna tried to put her arms around me, but all of a sudden, it was stifling, just _too much_. This _place_ was stifling. Anna meant well, but she was still seeing too much in me of the twelve-year-old boy who had put her on her first chocobo. I wanted to slap her across the face and make her see me for what I was _now_: Turk, SOLDIER . . . killer. As it was, the best I could manage was to take a step back. 

"Mom, give him room to breathe. You're way too touchy-feely sometimes." Rayleigh appeared from around the corner of the barn. "Uncle Vincent, what did you find? Or . . . who?" 

"The body was that of Doctor Lucrecia Crescent," I said, and saw understanding slide across my niece's face. "I'm not certain whether she's dead or just mako-comatose, but either way, we have to get her out of there. She probably still has viable J-cells in her system." 

Rayleigh's face twisted. "Shit. You're right. I'll call for the clean-up crew. Are you going to tell . . . him?" 

"Him?" Anna echoed. 

"Dr. Crescent's son is in SOLDIER," I explained briefly. Leaving out the important parts, because they weren't mine to reveal. 

"And he's been waiting _twenty years_ for news? Titan preserve us . . ." Anna shook her head. 

"Anna," I said. "I deal with this sort of thing routinely. So does Rayleigh. It's much easier on us when the people around us also treat it as routine." The important parts of that were true, at least for me. 

"The constant shock and horror does get kind of old," my niece said wryly. "When you're immersed in this crap, you learn how you need to deal with it. Or you snap under the stress. Right now, I think I'd like that hug that Uncle Vincent didn't want, if that's okay with you, Mom." 

As they came together, I turned away and walked into the barn with the damned fractious chocobo in tow. I unsaddled the bird, gave him half a measure of mimett greens in the hope of improving his temperament, and began to groom his feathers where the tack had marked him as he snatched ungraciously at his food. 

"I'm sorry," Anna said quietly from behind me. "I may be kind of thick-headed, but I'm starting to get the impression that you find me a bit . . . clingy." 

I shrugged. "I've spent most of my life without family . . . without more than passing contact with anyone outside Shinra, really. I suppose I've forgotten how to relate to someone who doesn't understand." It was difficult to even explain _what_ she didn't understand. Some of it was about how I lived my life. Some of it was about why. And some of it was about not really being human anymore. 

"You're right. I don't understand. I think I probably don't want to. I guess . . . just remember that this is still your home. One of them." 

"One of them," I agreed quietly, and a smile lit her face. 

"Bring your lover next time—whoever he is. Because I figure you wouldn't have been so careful with your words if it was a she," Anna added when I looked at her. 

"_Obaachan_ wants to meet him too," I admitted. "But I'm afraid he'd end up killing Allison in self-defense." 

"You really are involved with General Sephiroth, then." 

I gave her my all-purpose shrug one more time, and I think she almost laughed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And tomorrow, we get Sephiroth's reaction (and Barrett's sole cameo in this series so far).


	6. Epilogue

"Call me when you're done, got it?" The foreman of the group of workers we'd brought up from Corel, a big, dark-skinned man named Barrett Wallace, filled the mouth of the cave from top to bottom and side to side, almost blocking the noise of the waterfall. 

"We will," Sephiroth said, and gestured for Wallace to retreat. The man did so, mumbling under his breath about ungrateful bastards with sticks up their asses. 

We moved quietly, solemnly forward, the crystal picking up the light from our eyes and throwing it back at us. The workers had, at Sephiroth's insistence, either taken their lamps with them when they left, or switched them off before departing. Except for a random scattering of hazard tape and dropped tools, the cave was the same now as when I had first entered it . . . until we reached the inner room. The base of the big crystal that contained Lucrecia's body was extensively marked now, holes drilled for the shaped explosive charges that would hopefully free it from the cave without harming her. Examinations had detected what the scientists thought was a faint heartbeat, so she might still be alive, somehow. It was imperative that we didn't damage the crystal that surrounded her liquid mako environment until we knew for certain. 

«_Vincent?_» her voice whispered in my head. Sephiroth raised his eyebrows. It was the first indication I'd had that anyone other than myself could hear her. 

"I'm here," I said aloud. "I brought Sephiroth with me." 

«_Sephiroth? My son?_» 

My lover took a cautious step forward to lay his hand on the mako crystal in which she slept, and echoed my words. "I'm here." 

«_Sephiroth . . . my beautiful son . . . I am so very sorry._» 

"Apologies can't repair the past . . . but it's clear that you came to want me on some level that had nothing to do with my value as an experiment, or Hojo would never have bothered separating us. That's more than I can say for most other people in my life." 

As apology-acceptances went, it was more than a bit ambiguous—but that was Sephiroth. It seemed to satisfy Lucrecia, at any rate, because I heard a soft sigh inside my head. 

«_I love you,_» the voice whispered to us both. And, «_Please be careful._» 

"I will." Sephiroth's gloved fingers traced the line of her chin through the crystal. I wondered if he realized just how alike the two of them looked, nose and cheekbones and the drape of fine hair across high foreheads. "_Mother,_" he added. "Jenova tried to convince me to call her that, but . . . better you than her, if those are the choices Fate has seen fit to offer me." 

«_Oh . . ._» It was the merest breath of non-sound. And for the second time, I thought I saw a tear trace its way down Lucrecia's cheek as Sephiroth turned abruptly and strode from the cavern. 

I was learning that he wasn't much for good-byes. 

I glanced at Lucrecia, but I said nothing. Nor did she. Silently I turned and followed Sephiroth out. 

He had moved away from the mouth of the cave, standing almost hidden behind the portion of the waterfall the workers hadn't diverted for better access, staring out at the world through its blurry lens. 

"Are you alright?" I asked. 

"I don't know," he said, still watching the water. "I don't know what this is that I'm feeling." 

I wasn't sure I would have known either, in his place. Knowing that she was dead . . . might have offered him some level of closure, of _certainty_, that was now swept away. If he had been any other man, there would have been a storm tearing at his insides. With Sephiroth, it was likely more like a whirlpool, hidden beneath the surface and dangerous to explore. 

I laid my good hand on his arm. His muscles were clenched so hard that I could feel the contours through two layers of leather. And for a long moment, we remained like that. Which meant something in and of itself, since neither of us is very tactile. Especially in public. 

Then he sighed softly and dipped his head. Turning away from the water, he began to walk back toward the helicopter. 

I went with him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, they both have some processing to do. We may see a bit of that in the sequel, if I ever finish it.
> 
> The remaining complete short thing (well, novella-length thing) in this universe is the one about Rufus and the Turks, which I still need to read over for continuity. I'll probably start posting either this Monday, or a week from Monday.


End file.
